The 2019 Killer Content Awards

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B2B innovators are looking at content and campaigns through a new lens. This year's Killer Content Award winners are forging a new path beyond the status-quo and are making new discoveries in buyer engagement and content experiences. Take a look inside our telescope at these incredible campaigns and explore a new creative galaxy that's not so far, far away...

Demand Gen Report (DGR), a division of G3 Communications, is a targeted online publication that spotlights the strategies and solutions that help B2B companies better align sales, marketing and disparate teams to support growth and drive revenue. DGR content and news coverage focuses on the sales and marketing tools and technologies that enable companies to better measure and manage multichannel demand generation efforts. Demand Gen Report is the only information source directly focused on this rapidly emerging business discipline.

Exploring The B2B Marketing Galaxy

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Uncover New Worlds Of Content Marketing

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Imprivata, a healthcare IT security company, implemented an ABM program that encompasses automated digital outreach, direct mail and human-touch elements. Understanding that its target audience was more cerebral, Imprivata had to carefully consider creative tactics that buyers may consider “hokey.” The result was a Summer Reading Book Club in which target personas received three books within two- to three-week intervals.

Capitalize on your presence at events. Use a fun theme and personal, high-touch tactics to engage attending companies before, during and after the event.

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Insight Enterprises created an ABM-driven field campaign that promoted its capabilities in a personalized way to target buyers. The company utilized third-party, real-time personalization (RTP) tools to gather data about each user based on their IP address and web behaviors. Using this data, Insight Enterprises was able to serve tailored content across email marketing and paid media channels. Messaging drove buyers to a form that promoted an upcoming event and a raffle entry the company was running. At the event, Insight Enterprises saw greater engagement compared to similar campaigns that did not leverage RTP. The campaign has generated new, aspirational benchmarks for all of Insight Enterprise’s campaigns moving forward: • $1.3 million in revenue; • An average form-fill completion rate of 37.5%; and • 77 new opportunities created.

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Digital Pi, a Marketo Platinum Services Partner, wanted to build relationships with companies on the INC. 5000 list that also used Marketo. The goal was simple: to get executives at these companies to participate in a video interview where they would share their “secret sauce” to growth and their goals for 2019. For the INC. 5000 “Secret Sauce” campaign, Digital Pi sent 160 key accounts a highly focused direct mail piece: a bottle of hot sauce. The mailer served as a “door opener” that encouraged recipients to learn more about the campaign and encouraged them to either submit their own videos or set time to film a video interview during an INC. 5000 event in San Antonio. The company also used email to drive recipients to the landing page and phone calls to confirm receipt of the gift and to schedule interviews. More than 4,500 people engaged with the triple-touch campaign, and the quirky theme helped boost buzz: 64% of all landing page traffic came from organic social.

The marketing team selected titles based on feedback from their in-house Chief Medical Officer and CIO. The books revolved around how organizations can harness the value of transformative change in the digital age. They were all sent with a hand-written note, with messaging progressing based on where buyers were in the campaign. The notes included a sales phone number if buyers wanted to reach out, but the marketing and sales team also collaborated on a proactive outreach strategy after the campaign was complete.

Although the pilot program only targeted four accounts, the company had a 100% response rate, which encouraged the team to roll it out to another 14 accounts.

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Before getting too creative with an ABM campaign theme, carefully research your target audience and determine whether they would respond positively. There’s a fine line between creative and kitschy.

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Real-time personalization tools can help your team stand out from the noise surrounding a particular topic or event. Consider ways to personalize emails and advertising — without being creepy.

ACCOUNT-BASED MARKETING CAMPAIGNs

Take advantage of unique promotions or events hosted by your audience’s competitors. It’s great fodder for content that will help them stay ahead of the competition.

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Uberflip’s Rethink Your Content Experience is a bi-weekly content marketing video series that showcases provocative thought leadership for content marketers, demand generation marketers, digital marketers, CMOs and VPs of Marketing. As the host of its annual thought leadership conference, Conex: The Content Experience, the company always recorded the sessions and made them available in their entirety following the conference, and promoted them through a series of wrap-up articles. But given the fact that not everyone has the time to consume a 30-minute presentation, Uberflip decided to leverage the recorded presentations to create punchy, 90-second TED Talks style videos that were strong enough to stand on their own. Housed in the company’s content hub, the videos were intended to be educational, digestible and episodic in nature, with each one providing key learnings and takeaways for their audiences. The videos were also used in the service of promoting the following year’s conference. The Rethink Your Content Experience video series delivered on all fronts, and really hit the mark with Uberflip’s target audience. Specifically, the video series has driven 351,426 views across the company’s owned and managed channels — performing best on Facebook, which has generated approximately 63% of views. On the content hub, the series averages a 3:19 time-on-page, which is 95% higher than the hub average of 1:42. It also sees a bounce rate of just 34%, which is 120% lower compared with the hub average of about 75%.

Bluecore, a retail marketing company, used Amazon’s Prime Day as inspiration for a campaign fueled by a package of tailored content assets. All pieces revolved around ways retailers can better meet customers’ needs and thrive even as Amazon continues to grow.

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Reuse long-form, existing content to make it easier to digest. Package content together in a microsite or hub so it’s even easier to access (and measure!).

The campaign included: A data-backed report on Amazon’s shot to the top and advice on how retailers should respond; a tactical playbook on how to approach Prime Day; a blog post and video on two Prime Day strategies; an infographic on how retailers performed during the previous Prime Day; a panel discussion on the growing influence of Amazon; an interactive infographic on Amazon’s successs; and a direct mail piece featuring a lottery ticket where everyone was a winner to fit in with the theme that Amazon won’t be the only winner.

Through the campaign, Bluecore experienced a 17.8% click-to-open rate on Amazon email content, an 18% conversion rate on Amazon lottery ticket mailer and a 43.1% click-through rate from its Tale of Two Prime Day Strategies video.

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The Retail Experience Project by commerce platform Aptos is a multi-month, multi-media content generation and nurturing program designed to present retail industry executives with insights into the challenges and opportunities inherent in a highly disruptive and volatile climate. Every asset Aptos created for the program was designed to include insights, opinions and tactical best practices from industry experts. The goal was to educate and inspire the target audience, helping them overcome the issue of disruption and capitalize on new market opportunities. The program’s online home is a comprehensive landing page that provides easy access to all of the program’s core assets, including E-books, web seminars, a podcast series, infographics, listicles and checklists. The program is still being supported by a well-coordinated social media program (which is bolstered by the social media programs of all experts featured in the series); organic and paid media coverage; and numerous blog posts on the Aptos corporate blog. Thus far, the Retail Experience Project has exceeded all the company’s goals for audience engagement. The podcast series has achieved well over 1,000 downloads, while one webinar attracted more than 350 registrants. The program to date has garnered more than 3,000 raised hands that have been converted into hundreds of MQLs and numerous SQLs.

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bundled content

Offer your audience thought leadership content in a rich menu of formats to cater to their preferences and boost engagement.

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Develop content based on target segments and use in-person events to reach them IRL. Online and offline engagement means more opportunities and higher likelihood of conversions!

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out of this world

In 2018, the Chrome Enterprise team at Google was tasked with showing enterprises the benefits of Chromebook and Chrome Browser — specifically to articulate the gap between the legacy technology provided by IT versus what employees use at home. The company did this by launching a campaign called Cloud Workers, which illustrated to IT how employees are accustomed to seamless, synced and secure tech experiences, and how IT can match those experiences in the workplace to support employee productivity. The campaign launched at Google’s Next 2018 event in San Francisco, featuring an integrated experience with a Cloud Worker demo that engaged more than 500 attendees, as well as a breakout session and content featuring Cloud Workers. In addition, Google launched a blog post to explain The Age of the Cloud Worker and a website on Google Cloud's website, with core facts and details, including specially commissioned research with Forrester. To date, the campaign has reached 5,000 targeted buyers.

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Markem-Imaje (M-I) is a global manufacturer and distributor of specialized traceability, variable data and product identification equipment for the packaging industry. The company’s Craft Beer Campaign — focused on the craft brewery segment — included a healthy combination of digital content, high-touch events, print collateral and direct sales outreach. Specifically, the company launched a craft beer brochure laying out M-I’s complete solution, several co-created videos with leading breweries on the company’s YouTube channel, an active blog, ongoing participation in every Craft Beer Conference, articles and more. Thanks to the campaign, M-I sales in this market segment grew by 52% after the initial launch in 2016-2017. With ongoing campaign execution, the average 2015-2018 growth stands at 10%, whereas, over the last three years, the number of breweries has effectively plateaued and craft beer production has slowed down to a 5% average.

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If your brand or product caters to different types of users, create content that illustrates how it can help solve their specific pain points. This is significantly more effective than creating batch-and-blast product messaging and hoping it resonates.

The Empowered Marketer series from Zaius, a B2C CRM platform provider, is a collection of videos, podcasts and blogs for marketers, by marketers. In the series, the company interviews top e-commerce marketers, B2C growth marketers and marketing agency leaders to explore how real marketers captivate their audience, convert new buyers and drive long-term customer loyalty. Each episode of this series includes a two-minute video, a longer podcast and a blog post. New episodes are published every other week on Medium, the podcast is available on all popular podcast platforms, and the videos are on YouTube and Wistia. Across all platforms, each episode garners about 4,000 downloads/views per month. This six-month old series is also very popular on LinkedIn: on average, the videos get 2,000 to 3,000 views, and spark in-depth discussions in the comments section.

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BUYER-FOCUSED CONTENT

Work with influencers who can relate to your target audience’s pain points and challenges, and share their stories on different channels for maximum engagement.

SmarterCX.com by Oracle was created to be a destination for professionals tasked with building a "next-gen" customer experience. Professionals can go to the site to find breaking news, in-depth analyses, expert insights and tools to empower them in their day-to-day professional lives. In the wake of the site's first anniversary, SmartCX has published more than 250 articles by 60 authors including CX leaders, influencers, analysts, and solution providers. The site also touts a variety of multi-media content, including nearly 100 videos, a Women in Tech interview series, CX cartoons, dynamic ads and more. SmarterCX has exceeded its goals in terms of views, engagement and lead generation.

People gravitate towards editorial content that aligns with their unique professional goals and pain points. Consider a thought leadership-first approach to your content that puts your brand in the background, and your partners, influencers and peers in the spotlight.

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JDA Software, a retail and supply chain solution provider, is committed to increasing the number of women in STEM and changing the perception that gender is an impediment to professional success. To further this cause, the company implemented a “Wednesdays for Women” blog series, which highlights the role of women in the supply chain and technology world. The weekly blog series showcases women who work at JDA, female executives among JDA customers and more. Since launching in July 2017, the blogs have racked up more than 14,000 page views and 135 comments. Visitors spend an average of three minutes on each page.

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CAUSE MARKETING

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B2B brands can use marketing to support social causes and spotlight their partnerships with specific organizations. Consider how you can make a difference within your community!

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Cisco’s Global Virtual Sales & Customer Success team needed a scalable way to build customer engagement that would ultimately drive adoption, improve retention and boost revenue. To address this, the company launched an entire universe of intelligent, always-on global campaigns. Using sophisticated technology including PathFactory and Eloqua, they activated their arsenal of content to create a seamless customer journey and developed comprehensive analytics to measure their efforts. Cisco’s Digital Experience Initiative increased customer engagement, contributing to a 24% increase in closed-won revenue. In addition, Cisco links increased content engagement with a 3.5X lift in customer adoption.

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CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETING

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Invest in opportunities to create content that has an impact at every stage of the sales funnel!

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With a huge amount of admiration and respect for Vogue and the publication’s annual September Issue, the Sigstr team wanted to do the same for email signature marketing. Sigstr’s September Issue of Email Signature Marketing includes 50 of the most marvelous, elegant and lavish banner designs in the email signature scene today. The piece of content was uniquely designed to serve multiple audiences in ways unlike any other resource Sigstr has published. With the September Issue, the company aimed to: • Make the customers profiled feel extra special and more invested in Sigstr; • Inspire current customers to do more and fuel them with ideas for future campaigns; • Upsell current customers not currently using Sigstr’s targeting functionality or design services; • Show current prospects all of the cool things leading marketing teams are doing today with this new form of email marketing; and • Contribute to Sigstr’s credibility as the category leader that works with many amazing brands. In just four days, the Issue achieved the highest amount of views ever seen amongst all past E-books and case studies (600 views). Thanks to Uberflip powering its resource hub, Sigstr was able to intelligently recommend other pieces of content to those viewing this resource, which led to more than 50% of visitors staying on the hub and accessing additional Sigstr content. More than 25% of traffic was sourced from those selected customers sharing the resource with their networks on LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Tying your content together in a relevant, seamless journey for your buyers enhances the customer experience!

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Zekelman Industries, a steel pipe and tube manufacturer, wanted to increase support for domestic manufacturing. The company partnered with The Mx Group and developed “American Metal” — a full-fledged marketing campaign that spanned email, video, direct mail and social channels. In addition, Zekelman created a 32-page E-book, two national 30-second TV commercials and a SiriusXM radio commercial. The assets embodied patriotism with a red, white and blue color scheme and design that prominently featured a bald eagle. “American Metal” tapped the power of patriotism in order to build brand awareness and educate audiences on the benefits of domestic manufacturing. Zekelman Industries saw significant reach and impact with the campaign: • The two TV commercials made 89,900,000 impressions; • The SiriusXM radio commercial made 104,800,000 impressions; and • The paid social program made 10,310,623 impressions, with 234,689 clicks and 1,436 conversions.

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Don’t be afraid to go all-in on a creative theme — especially if it aligns with your value proposition. Apply this theme across channels to create a consistent experience for buyers, no matter where they interact with your brand.

It’s clear that 2018 was the year of GDPR. With the data regulation deadline quickly approaching, PathFactory crafted a “GDPR Wars” campaign to promote email opt-ins, preserve its database and comply with the new requirements. The email campaign was inspired by “Star Wars” and positioned GDPR as a “new hope” for email inboxes everywhere. As such, the company asked subscribers to opt-in and join the fight — or give in to the dark side. The creative copy and design helped the GDPR Wars campaign succeed. According to the company, it performed 241% better than PathFactory’s average email sends.

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DESIGN THEME

A little creativity goes a long way when it comes to content marketing, especially in email campaigns.

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Align your organization with well-known organizations, non-profits and other types of companies that have a presence in a specific market. This will add clout and credibility to your content.

As part of its 2018 financial crime marketing strategy, Refinitiv (formerly the Financial and Risk business of Thomson Reuters) commissioned a survey through FTI Consulting that focused on the true global cost of financial crime. The independent survey included feedback from more than 2,300 senior executives across 19 countries. Refinitiv also interviewed non-governmental organizations such as the Education Endowment Foundation and Walk Free foundation, as well as the European Union’s law enforcement agency to understand the wider economic, social and human impact. As part of its multi-channel marketing approach to promote the survey, Refinitiv tapped influencers to amplify the reach and impact of the content. Components included: • A June 2018 Twitter chat that featured 19 risk and compliance social influencers and reached seven million users; • A follow-up chat in October 2018, which featured 13 influencers and reached three million users; • A webinar including a panel of influential speakers from the World Economic Forum, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and Rani Hong; • A series of proprietary events using panelists and influencers from the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Corruption and Anti-Financial Crime space; and • A series of videos featuring interviews with RUSI, Rani Hong, World Economic Forum, Europol and the Future of Financial Intelligence Sharing. The campaign has resonated deeply with Refinitiv’s target audience, leading to the following results: • 2,471 marketing qualified leads; • 153,221 impressions on Thomson Reuters sites; • 1,937 report downloads; • 1,980 mini-site views; and • 2,333 social posts using the hashtag #FightFinancialCrime.

As part of an influencer pilot program, Oracle utilized five internal influencers and seven external influencers to tell a cohesive story that subtly connected to Oracle’s engineered systems products. The posts were measured by total number of hits, social impressions and social engagements, and levered non-biased, third-party perspectives to improve Oracle’s brand perception. Results at the time of submission included: • 4,321 combined blog views; • 134,228 social impressions; and • 2,096 social engagements.

Oracle has a wealth of internal influencers who have detailed expertise in specific areas of the business, such as supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and infrastructure. However, the company wanted to establish and strengthen relationships with external influencers, so they could expand upon the brand’s thought leadership strategy.

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Don’t limit influencer input to one landmark piece. Find ways to repurpose their insights for different formats and content experiences.

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Add internal experts and well-known thought leaders within your organization to enrich your influencer campaign/strategy. This is a great way to better position your brand as a thought leader in a specific topic or industry.

Bottomline Technologies sought to generate buzz around the company’s involvement in AFP — one of the largest payments/finance industry events in the world. As part of a long-term campaign, the company created an authoritative E-book on the future of business payments, and its impact on banks, technology providers and corporations. Influencers played a critical role in building out the E-book, sharing their unique insights and experiences to add clout and credibility to the piece. Although the piece was formally launched at AFP, it was also housed on the Bottomline Technologies website, was promoted across social media and used to secure interviews with industry reporters. Thus far, influencer input has been used in multiple blog posts for the brand’s smartpayments.com editorial site. However, the E-book will continue to be reused and repurposed throughout 2019. The piece was so well-received that Visa, a Bottomline partner, wanted to produce and release it together. Key results from the E-book include: • Influencer social activation generated 33% of overall downloads in the first four days of the AFP conference; • Promotional emails sent to people who visited the Bottomline booth had an open rate of 37%; and • 50% of the traffic going to the company website from social posts was net-new traffic.

INFLUENCER CAMPAIGNs

From October through December, marketers are hard at work, developing their campaigns and strategies for the year ahead. In order to engage and empower the marketing community, Content4Demand built an interactive “advent” calendar that included a variety of thought leadership assets, educational blogs and tactical videos brimming with best practices. Every day of the campaign, which ran Nov. 26-Dec. 21, 2018, subscribers received an email saying that a new “gift” was available. When they clicked through to the calendar experience, they would click on the date to virtually “unwrap” a new resource. Content4Demand used the Ceros platform to drum up holiday cheer with great success. By the end of the campaign, 442 visitors came to the calendar and engaged with the content. Other results included: • Total opens: 707 (with an average of 20 opens per day); • Total interaction clicks: 2,547; and • Total video views: 584.

vAuto provides technology, tools and business intelligence to thousands of car dealerships across the United States and Canada. In order to build awareness around its Stockwave software application, vAuto partnered with The Mx Group on a campaign that revolved around its core value proposition: the ability to help dealerships improve front-end gross profits. As part of a campaign that included print and digital advertising, vAuto and The Mx Group created an interactive online calculator that allowed buyers to enter key metrics, including: average front-end gross on auction sourced inventory, the number of vehicles they source at auctions per month, average monthly sales and the time spent sourcing per week. The Mx Group aggregated Stockwave user data and third-party benchmarks to create a basis for gross profit comparison between Stockwave users and non-Stockwave users. So, when visitors entered their information, they were provided with a personalized analysis of their status compared to potential gains from using Stockwave. The interactive calculator has generated nearly 15,000 total page views, helping vAuto better engage middle-funnel prospects and improve overall lead quality.

out of this world

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A month-long (or longer) campaign that “unlocks” content on a specific schedule gives you the opportunity to re-engage with buyers so you stay top of mind.

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INTERACTIVE CONTENT

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Benchmarks and comparative data are powerful metrics that inform buyers and pique their interest, driving them to learn more about how they can improve their practices.

NanoLumens, provider of digital LED displays, developed a new content strategy that segmented pieces by verticals, personas and industries. The company worked with Uberflip to tag content by vertical, segment outreach based on their 11 different verticals, and create streams of content for each persona, ensuring their audiences were being served the most relevant content for them. The goal of segmenting the content by vertical was to increase click-through rates on targeted campaigns. The new strategy helped increase click-through rates by 64%, and the campaigns that linked to personalized content resulted in 20 net-new opportunities. Plus, by revamping their demand generation campaigns with personalized outreach to their verticals, NanoLumens was able to increase lead conversion rates by 450%.

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Have a piece of content that is just too good to retire? Update it based on audience insights, past performance and any new trends or developments.

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ChannelAdvisor is always looking for ways to revamp existing campaigns with new methods for maximizing impact. This was the case with the company’s “Essential E-Commerce Calendar,” a six-month PDF calendar that ChannelAdvisor has been publishing for years. Due to its popularity, the company decided to expand and refine the calendar with help from a newly implemented third-party analytics software solution. The solution helped ChannelAdvisor evolve from a single-touch attribution model to a multi-touch attribution model, giving the team greater insight into the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. In addition to a new look and feel, the calendar was available in two separate versions: a traditional downloadable PDF and a printed, hangable version to use in ABM direct mail campaigns. In 2017 and 2018, ChannelAdvisor saw 1,293% ROI when the calendar campaigns were weighted in its attribution model. Additional highlights include: • 1,671 calendars delivered to targeted accounts with 753% ROI, based on direct mail costs and final bookings; • Multiple campaigns across Facebook and LinkedIn resulted in 676% ROI, based on advertising costs and final bookings; and • Downloadable PDF and interactive ICS files on the website resulted in 4,762% ROI, based on design costs and final bookings.

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Personalize content by vertical so you can reach the right audience at the right time with the right content. Leverage as much audience data as you can to get granular.

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MEASURABLE ROI

Making content available both physically and digitally allows you to reach target audiences on their terms. Plus, a fun theme doesn’t hurt!

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The Epson Am B2B strategy is designed to foster buyer-centered interactions with prospects who get coached through the funnel with technologies and humans to realize closed/won business. The team began by getting IT, sales, marketing and senior leadership to evolve marketing and sales from a product promotion and sales call follow-up exercise, to a coordinated, multi-channel effort to find, convince and convert prospects based on voice-of-customer research. With that information, Epson deployed marketing automation and nurture performance/attribution reporting, new content and multi-persona email nurture flows and a multi-channel approach to engagement that resulted in productive conversations via inbound and outbound phone support from Televerde that yielded closed/won deals. In addition to greater marketing and sales alignment, and full-funnel visibility from prospect to closed/won, Epson’s email nurture campaigns and content engagement for each segment contributed to a 2X increase in MQL conversion rates. Two campaigns also generated $1.7 million in pipeline and delivered closed/won deals with revenue that grows each week.

Mimeo, an online printing and distribution company, developed a top-of-funnel content campaign around blended training “recipes” to reach new training professionals. The company solicited recipes from eight training industry leaders to design a cookbook-themed microsite and printed book. The microsite debuted a webinar that shared ideas around how to apply each recipe to everyday learning. Then, attendees were able to request the printed version of the cookbook. The campaign exceeded goals, with 112 webinar registrations and 120 printed cookbook requests in the first month, tying a significant amount of pipeline to the project.

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B2B success relies on every department working together towards a common goal! Include all necessary departments in the planning process to promote clarity and drive results.

Adobe Creative Cloud, the design-focused arm of Adobe Systems Inc., partnered with the Interaction Design Association to create a series of one-day global events for the design community. Dubbed World Interaction Design Day, the event aimed to unite the community and show how it improved the human condition. As part of the campaign, hundreds of events took place worldwide, each accompanied by a series of blog posts (featuring original, SEO-optimized illustrations) focused on “diversity and inclusion in design,” while actively promoting the events themselves. Everything was also heavily promoted on social media across time zones, with pictures, videos, quotes from speakers and attendees fueling the content. All content and social posts were cross-promoted by the Interaction Design Association, which helped to reach a massive audience of designers and design agencies.

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MULTI-TOUCH CAMPAIGns

Partnering with like-minded organizations to help you build and amplify an event can help you build a larger audience for the event and all accompanying content.

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Gordian’s new lead nurture email campaign for their RSMeans data solutions kicked off in February of 2018 with a customer survey designed to get to know the people who buy their construction cost data more intimately. Using buyers’ long-form survey answers, the team was able to look beyond what Gordian products do for them as professionals and discovered what their products do for them as people. Knowing what their customers want and the jobs they wanted to get done allowed the company to map out content relevant to their personas at the Discovery, Consideration and Decision stages of the customer journey. Email open rates and click-to-open rates were significantly higher relative to their average metrics at all stages of the customer journey, proving Gordian was serving their audiences relevant content at the right time. MQLs per month are currently up 70%, and they’re converting 33% more MQLs in about half the time.

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The more insights you can gather from customer engagement, the more detailed a nurture experience you can offer prospective customers.

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QASymphony wanted to better leverage nurture as the core of its demand generation engine through a migration of a Perpetual Demand Generation (PDG) model, providing a playbook for orchestrating and optimizing every element of customer engagement throughout the buying cycle. This meant going far above and beyond “traditional” nurture models. QASymphony wanted to not only nurture via Marketo, but to also weave the nurture concept through events, fulfillment emails and an advanced website personalization engine. The company wanted to track interactions across all online and offline channels (including live events), and then leverage that data to create a unique and improved customer experience. This translates into personalized website experiences and recommendations, advanced nurture adjustments inside of Marketo and more accurate lead scoring for the sales team. Since launching the first phase of nurture in March 2018, the program has provided 78% closed-won ROI to date and 407% qualified pipeline ROI. More than 7,000 demand generation-sourced personas have entered the program since launch, with more than 60% of them being the target personas QASymphony was unable to reach previously.

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Don’t be afraid to ask customers specific questions about how they use your product or services. This is valuable feedback that will allow you to create more relevant campaigns and content across touch points.

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NURTURE CAMPAIGNs

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Veeam created a series of Customer Reference Books to equip its sales team with powerful stories about how the intelligent data management company has provided transformative solutions for its clients. The company collaborated with Yeager Marketing to produce the success stories, which were developed in both print and digital formats, so the sales team could target accounts across both channels. In less than a year, the campaign generated 936 responses and 353 leads. It also received more than 1,400 page views, with an average view time of nearly 10 minutes.

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SALES ENABLEMENT CAMPAIGNs

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The more data sales has for prospecting, the better equipped they are to approach leads, have tailored conversations and successfully close deals.

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Elsevier, global information analytics provider, developed a Journal Backfile Prospecting tool to help sales identify potential customers. The tool integrates information from different data sources, so sales can successfully identify prospects with maximum ROI benefits. In addition, account managers can leverage key data and identify the right journal package for customer needs. Typically, account managers use turnaway data to convince purchase of a specific package. This turnaway data indicates how often researchers tried to access material that had not been subscribed by the institution. Integrating turnaway data all together with subject title, turnaway trends, download usage for the Backfile journal titles and researchers in which subject areas can benefit from the Backfile packages provides sales more insightful information to their customers and also answers most of the questions that customers may have in mind. The tool was first developed for all Asia-Pacific nations in October in 2017. The insightful data has been triggered the most interest in Backfile package for many customers. Marketing initiated this data-driven sales enablement strategy has helped sales use analytics to build business success.

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killer takeaway

Creating content for sales enablement is a win-win. It helps drive marketing-sales alignment and boosts lead generation.

The RAIN Group wanted to expand the reach of its research beyond standard reports, which are circulated primarily amongst its membership and client base. The company decided to tap into short-form content and create an eye-catching, informative infographic that could easily be shared across social media. The “9 Ways To Crush Your Sales Goals” infographic was superhero themed to match the recently released “Thor” and “Justice League” movies. It became the company’s top-viewed infographic of all time and resulted in 30 closed-won deals. Other results included: • 10,600 website visits; • 18,000 new and existing contacts influenced; • More than 400 clicks and 1,400 new social media followers for the repurposed individual social sharing graphic; • Coverage from several sites, including MarketingProfs with over 2,800 page views; and • An email open rate 18% higher than other emails and a CTR rate that was 154% higher.

out of this world

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Spice up your campaigns by drawing on pop culture inspiration and applying your theme to different channels and tactics.

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To help get marketing teams to sit down face to face and open communication within their organizations, Conductor created their own version of the popular game “Cards Against Humanity” — but with a marketing twist. The card game included 25 green prompt cards, such as “Communicating your results to senior management means _____,” which could then be matched with 100 white punchline cards including “Updating your LinkedIn profile to accurately reflect your shaky grasp of Microsoft Office” and “Continuing to make weekly ‘Call Me Maybe’ videos in case that ever becomes a thing again.”

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The card game was designed as part of a single ABM campaign that aimed to target high-priority accounts with a skillful blend of creativity, humor and marketing insight. It received high praise and was shared extensively across social media. In addition, it generated a 19% conversion rate — nearly double the company’s average conversion rate for ABM campaigns (10%). Due to this success, Conductor began using the game across other ABM campaigns, at events and more.

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SHORT-FORM CONTENT

Don’t overlook the power of short-form content that can be easily shared across social media and repurposed on third-party sites.

The Dow Chemical Company had one core goal: to leverage its sponsorship of the Olympic Games to grow revenue, advance innovation and technology adoption, as well as increase market penetration for its Olympic & Sports Solutions division. An integrated communications campaign was employed to use sport as a fresh way to engage with B2B audiences and influencers. A dedicated landing page, as well as original content such as infographics, editorial fact sheets, news releases, videos and more, highlighted Dow’s expertise and technology solutions that powered the Games. Social media served as an integral force for amplifying this content, making it relatable to key audiences in real-time during the Games. The company saw notable success with its social initiatives, including: • 352 new targeted followers on O&SS Twitter and LinkedIn – including key media, athletes, sports/Olympics organizations, and sustainability professionals; • O&SS Twitter following more than tripled after the conclusion of PyeongChang 2018, with the paid campaign resulting in 123 of the 189 new followers. The other 66 new followers occurred organically; • 3000+ visitors to the new PyeongChang 2018 landing page, 12% of that was web traffic from social media posts; • Strong social engagement from audiences of value across various Dow businesses; and • 42 website visits from LinkedIn on the day of the Opening Ceremony, showing the value of aligning social content with real-time Olympic happenings.

out of this world

Mapping out audiences provides clear goals and objectives that drive all campaign activities.

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killer takeaway

Early in December 2017, less than a month before CES 2018, Bosch USA asked SS Digital Media (SSDM) to help launch its first integrated social media communications campaign around CES 2018. SSDM developed an omni-channel social campaign strategy that included on-site and back-end support, paid social campaigns, content creation, video and creative support. SSDM mapped out a plan that encompassed multiple target audiences and content topic types that would appeal to different target segments, including audiences attending and not attending the CES event. SSDM not only accomplished the client objective to increase overall following and engagement on the Bosch USA Facebook and Twitter pages, but achieved: • 11,300% increase in new Facebook page follows; • 11,000% increase in new Facebook page likes; • 220% increase in organic Facebook reach; • 106% increase in Twitter followers; and • 69% increase in mentions (increased engagement and conversations).

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Find unique ways to leverage global events to fuel content creation and drive campaigns that boost your brand!

killer takeaway

SOCIAL AMPLIFICATION

Video Content

Lucidchart decided to take a different approach to brand content when one of the company’s engineers threw out the crazy idea of creating a flowchart using their diagramming platform, Lucidchart, to explain the popular Internet meme around “doggos.” The design team created a short video that explains doggos using a Lucidchart diagram and, to everyone’s surprise, the video blew up overnight. So the team kept going, creating flowchart explanations for other Internet memes, such as cattos, nopes and sneks, as well as other trending topics, such as Star Wars relationships, tech jargon, Bitcoin, Fortnite and emojis. Taking a chance by moving away from traditional marketing efforts helped Lucidchart drive heavy amounts of organic traffic for the brand. The campaign has more than 160 million views, while the company’s YouTube channel has seen a 600% increase in watch time and a 40x increase in subscribers.

killer takeaway

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Finding the right partners with mutual goals can further expand content reach and boost engagement results.

out of this world

In 2018, NBC News Brand Studio and Synchrony Financial partnered to produce State of Pay, a new content series spotlighting innovation and thought leadership in the retail sector. Hosted by business journalist and certified financial advisor Bobbi Rebell, State of Pay features a variety of digital content, including video interviews, written analysis and stand-up reports. Content lives in a dedicated channel on CNBC.com, providing an informative and forward-looking environment within which to deliver the Synchrony brand message. The content has seen above-benchmark performance on all distribution platforms, according to NBC News Brand Studio. The State of Pay content experience has more than 18,000 page views. Social media amplification across Twitter and Facebook has successfully reached Synchrony’s target audience, delivering more than nine million impressions for the campaign to-date. Video amplification on social media has resulted in more than 700,000 video views and engagements.

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killer takeaway

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box to see how your company can align to current events, trends and memes.